Not just a technical fix: Rethinking rehabilitation for visually impaired people from minority communities

The experience of visual impairment (VI) is individual and highly influenced by factors such as cause of impairment, age at onset, class, gender and ones ethnicity and culture. Thus there is a fluidity in the characteristics, which help to determine how people adapt to their changing circumstances. A technological approach, which may dominate the rehabilitation profession, can therefore, for instance, address only part of visually impaired people's concerns. The introduction of the hitherto neglected dimensions of ethnicity and culture into the process of rehabilitation is necessary in an increasingly multicultural society.